MacRumors

In addition to our standalone articles covering the latest Apple news and rumors at MacRumors, this Quick Takes column provides a bite-sized recap of other headlines about Apple and its competitors on weekdays.

Tuesday, March 13

- Apple CEO Tim Cook visits Capitol Hill: Cook was spotted in the U.S. Capitol with senators Mark Warner (Democrat-Virginia) and Richard Burr (Republican-North Carolina). He reportedly had lunch with Warner.

Commentary: The report doesn't mention what was discussed, but it is fairly routine for Cook to make visits to Washington D.C. given his position. Warner is known to be a tech-savvy senator with concerns about cybersecurity.

- Apple hires Golden State Warriors executive as events director: Apple has hired Gail Hunter, who was vice president of public affairs and event management of the NBA's Golden State Warriors team. Hunter will serve as Apple's director of events effective March 19, according to the team.

Commentary: Hunter will join Apple just under three months prior to its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June, the company's largest event of the year. The report doesn't mention what her responsibilities will be.

- Apple supplier Wistron secures land to build new site in southern India: The contract manufacturer has received approval to build a new facility roughly 40 miles from Bengaluru, in the Indian state of Karnataka.

Commentary: Wistron will likely use its new facility to expand its iPhone SE assembly work. India charges a 20 percent duty on imported smartphones to encourage companies to manufacture products within the country.

- Apple expands rollout of Apple Music for Artists, a dashboard that provides artists with insights about how often their music is played and purchased, listener demographics, and more. A few thousand artists were invited to test the beta in January, and now additional artists can reserve a spot.

Commentary: Apple has also refreshed the look of its Apple Music and iTunes Store badges for artists and affiliate partners, shortly after updating its Made for iPhone, iPad, and iPod logos for certified accessories.

For more Apple news and rumors coverage, visit our Front Page, Mac Blog, and iOS Blog. Also visit our forums to join in the discussion.

With its new Galaxy S9 and S9+, Samsung debuted AR Emoji, a feature that mimics Animoji, the animated emoji characters that Apple introduced alongside the iPhone X.

In our latest YouTube video, we compared Samsung's new AR Emoji on the Galaxy S9 to Apple's Animoji on the iPhone X to check out the similarities and differences between the two features.

Apple's Animoji are enabled through the TrueDepth camera system, which is Apple's 3D facial recognition feature that maps out a user's facial features. The TrueDepth camera analyzes more than 50 muscle movements in different areas of the face for Animoji, detecting movement of the eyebrows, cheeks, chin, eyes, jaw, lips, eyes, and mouth to create super realistic representations of facial expressions.

Samsung's AR Emoji, while similar to Animoji, don't have the same kind of underlying technology powering them, so the facial expressions AR Emoji can replicate are far more rudimentary. While Animoji on the iPhone X can mimic subtle expressions, on the Galaxy S9, AR Emoji have trouble with anything that isn't exaggerated, better recognizing movements like a blink or an open mouth than something more subtle like a wink or an angry face.

There are a limited number of Animoji available, though, and that's where Samsung has Apple beat. There are more AR Emoji character options to work with, and in fact, you can even create a custom Bitmoji-style character modeled after your own face.

Characters can be customized with unique facial features, clothing, skin tone, and more, plus your recordings with AR Emoji aren't limited to 10 seconds -- you can record for as long as you want. You can also add stickers, and there are Bitmoji-like pre-made GIFs to send to people.

All in all, AR Emoji seems to have more in common with Snapchat than with Animoji. Those aforementioned stickers are similar to the Snapchat filters that let you add sunglasses, cute animal faces, and more to your own face and can't be compared to anything offered natively by Apple.

It's worth noting that third-party apps like Snapchat on iPhone X can also take advantage of the TrueDepth camera for filters that better fit the face, while on Samsung devices, Snapchat filters and AR Emoji stickers look much less natural.

As is typical, Samsung wins out in customizability, but Apple has the edge when it comes to the underlying technology. What do you think of AR Emoji compared to Animoji? Let us know in the comments.

Apple today announced that its 29th annual Worldwide Developers Conference will kick off on Monday, June 4 and will last through Friday, June 8 with the conference to be held once again at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California.

Developers can register to attend starting today, and Apple says registration will be open until Thursday, March 22 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time. As is typical, Apple will be selecting WWDC attendees using a lottery system due to the popularity of the conference.

Tickets will be priced at $1,599, and only developers who win Apple's ticket lottery will be able to purchase a WWDC ticket. To enter the lottery, developers must have been a member of the Apple Developer Program or the Apple Developer Enterprise Program as of March 13, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time.

Developers who are chosen through the WWDC ticket lottery will be notified by March 23 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time. Apple also plans to make up to 350 WWDC Student Scholarships available this year for students and members of STEM organizations. Scholarships provide a free WWDC ticket, free lodging, and free one year membership to the Apple Developer Program.

Scholarship submissions will open on Monday, March 26, 2018, and students will be asked to build an interactive scene in Swift playground that can be experienced within three minutes.

Apple uses its Worldwide Developers Conference to introduce new software, to debut new hardware products, and to network with thousands of developers from all over the world. This year, Apple is expected to introduce iOS 12, macOS 10.14, tvOS 12, watchOS 5, and new software for the HomePod.

Apple will hold a keynote event on Monday, June 4, where we will get our first glimpse at new software products and perhaps some new hardware. Rumors suggest Apple could use the event to introduce new lower-cost MacBook Air models and refreshed iPad Pro models equipped with Face ID.

Last year was the first year that Apple held its Worldwide Developers Conference at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California rather than at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and it appears the new location will be used for the foreseeable future.

Apple says that developers who are not chosen to attend the conference and "Apple enthusiasts everywhere" will be able to live stream the conference through the Apple Developer website or through the dedicated WWDC app for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.

Those who are not picked for WWDC are also able to attend alternate events throughout San Jose during the week of WWDC, such as AltConf, which was announced this morning. Tickets to AltConf, which allows developers to mingle and provides a venue for watching the keynote and other WWDC events, are free. AltConf will take place from June 4 to June 7.

Apple's new AirPower inductive charging mat will be released by the end of March, according to Taiwanese website DigiTimes.

The report, citing industry sources, claims the AirPower will have a maximum charging performance of up to 29 watts, compared to 7.5 watts for single-device wireless charging pads like the Belkin Boost Up and the Mophie Wireless Charging Base for the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X.

Apple said the AirPower will be released in 2018, but it hasn't provided an exact release date or pricing. Apple blogs Mac Otakara and The Apple Post also reported that the charging mat will be released in March, which is a common month for Apple to introduce new products, including a new 9.7-inch iPad last year.

AirPower is an oval-shaped accessory that can inductively charge multiple Apple devices at once, including the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, and Apple Watch Series 3 models. It will also be able to charge AirPods when they are placed in a new inductive charging case set to launch alongside AirPower.

The mat's ability to charge multiple devices will be achieved with a propriety technology developed by Apple. Apple said it will work to have its technology become part of the universal Qi standard supported by the latest iPhones.

It's still unclear if Apple will announce the AirPower's availability at a March event alongside other new products, via press release, or quietly with an update to its online store. If there is an event planned, Apple will likely send invitations to the media by Thursday at the absolute latest.

Apple's services chief Eddy Cue, who spoke at the SXSW media festival in Austin, Texas this week, revealed that Apple Music now has 38 million paying subscribers worldwide. Cue also said there are over eight million customers that are currently taking advantage of Apple Music's free three-month trial period.

The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Apple Music had 36 million subscribers in a February 4 report, so it appears the streaming music service has gained around two million subscribers in just over five weeks.

The numbers suggest Apple Music is growing at a clip of roughly 400,000 subscribers per week, or 1.6 million per month. Accordingly, it would appear to be Apple Music's fastest growth rate since it launched in June 2015, at least based on the figures that Apple has publicly shared over the past three years.

Apple Music Subscribers

• Oct 2015: 6.5 million
  

• Jan 2016: 10 million
  

• Feb 2016: 11 million
  

• Apr 2016: 13 million
  

• Jun 2016: 15 million
  

• Sep 2016: 17 million
  

• Dec 2016: 20 million
  

• Jun 2017: 27 million
  

• Sep 2017: 30 million
  

• Feb 2018: 36 million
  

• Mar 2018: 38 million

Spotify maintains a sizeable lead over Apple Music. The streaming music service revealed that it had 71 million paying subscribers as of the end of 2017, so it should be around twice as large as Apple Music by now. Spotify also has a free, ad-supported tier, giving it over 159 million listeners overall around the world.

Apple Music appears to be gaining ground on Spotify, however, and could reportedly eclipse its biggest rival in terms of U.S. subscribers later this year. The chart below from Apple analyst Horace Dediu is based on global subscribers.

Spotify launched in 2008, and expanded to the United States in 2011, while Apple Music debuted in over 100 countries at once in 2015. Both platforms offer individual subscriptions for $9.99 per month, student plans for $4.99 per month, and family plans sharable with up to six people for $14.99 per month.

Apple Music has the benefit of being preinstalled on hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads. It's also available on Mac, PC, Android, Apple Watch, Apple TV, vehicles equipped with CarPlay, Sonos, and HomePod.

At SXSW, Cue estimated there are around two billion people that have access to and a means to pay for streaming music, suggesting the market is ripe for growth. Apple Music and Spotify have around 110 million subscribers combined, so there is clearly an opportunity for both services to continue growing.

The harder task for Spotify will be turning a profit, which it has yet to do. Apple Music executive and record industry mogul Jimmy Iovine recently said streaming music services are "not making any money" due to a lack of margins, suggesting that a standard $9.99 per month subscription is not profitable.

Apple Music's profitability is likely less of a concern for Apple, as it sells a wide range of other products and services. Apple's broad services category brought in a record $8.5 billion revenue last quarter, up 18 percent year over year.

Fitbit today announced the Fitbit Versa, which the company described as the "smartwatch for all." The Versa has a few features that directly compare it to the Apple Watch, as well as an overall design that looks similar to Apple's wearable device. Alongside the Fitbit Versa, Fitbit announced a kid-focused Fitbit Ace device and female health tracking coming to the Fitbit iOS app.

Fitbit said the Versa is the "lightest metal smartwatch" in the United States market, with a case made out of ultra-thin, anodized aluminum that is slightly tapered and angled so it fits small or large wrists. The device's touchscreen supports a brightness of up to 1,000 nits, allowing users the ability to read the screen in bright environments, and it has a battery that will last for 4+ days.

The Fitbit Versa has many of the expected features seen in previous Fitbits, like 24/7 heart rate tracking, onscreen workouts, onboard music storage, automatic sleep tracking, and wallet-free payments on the Fitbit Versa Special Edition with an NFC chip. Fitbit will also sell a variety of accessories, ranging from stain-resistant classic bands to Horween leather, stainless steel links, metal mesh bands, and a designer collection.

"As the wearables category continues to grow, Fitbit Versa fills a critical need in the market by delivering a beautifully designed, full-featured smartwatch that is easy to use at a very competitive price," said James Park, co-founder and CEO of Fitbit. "Versa brings consumers the advanced health and fitness features Fitbit is known for, along with broad compatibility across mobile platforms and 4+ days battery life to provide users with a better picture of their overall health, making it stand out from any smartwatch available today."

The new smartwatch will launch with Fitbit OS 2.0 for the company's line of wearable devices, which will include a new personalized dashboard for a simplified overview of a user's health and fitness data. Users will be able to see daily and weekly health stats, historical activity, heart rate, exercise summaries, motivational messages, tips, and daily guidance, all from their wrist.

Over time, Fitbit said this dashboard will become more personalized, offering reminders, celebrations, logging, insights, sleep summaries, and social challenges, all with prompts to take actions based on each user's own data. This ongoing personalization aspect of Fitbit OS 2.0 is said to launch later in 2018. Here are a few other features available on Fitbit Versa with Fitbit OS 2.0:

Music on your device: Listen to phone-free music anywhere using Bluetooth headphones like Fitbit Flyer, including 300+ songs from your personal music collection, your favorite stations from Pandora, and now your own or curated playlists as well as Flow from Deezer.

Apps and clock faces you want: Personalize your device by choosing from a wide range of apps and clock faces in the Fitbit App Gallery, including those from Fitbit, Fitbit Labs, and popular brands like E*TRADE, Flipboard, Hue Lights, Nest, Starbucks, Strava, Surfline, United Airlines, Weather powered by AccuWeather, and Yelp. The Fitbit App Gallery has more than 550 apps and clock faces available today, many of which developers are working to make available to Versa users soon.

Fitbit Ace, the kid-focused wearable band, will include many of Fitbit's features in a pared-down hardware model. Kids eight and older wearing the device will see that it automatically tracks steps, active minutes, and sleep on a five day battery. Using a Fitbit family account, parents will be able to monitor and control who their kids connect with in the Fitbit app and other features of the Ace band.

The band will remind kids to move, and reward them for listening to such reminders with collectible badges. Coming soon, Fitbit will launch daily and weekly challenges where families and friends can compete against one another in certain health goals. There will also be a "Family Faceoff" that challlenges family members in a family account to earn the most steps in five days.

Fitbit Ace can be pre-ordered today on Fitbit.com for $99.95, and will launch in Q2 2018. Fitbit Versa is available to pre-order today on Fitbit.com and at select online retailers tomorrow, priced at $199.95. The smartwatch will come in the following colors: black with a black aluminum case, gray with a silver aluminum case, and peach with a rose gold aluminum case. Band accessories will start at $29.95 and cap at $99.95. For those who want the NFC-enabled Fitbit Versa Special Edition, that model will be $229.95. The device will officially launch worldwide in April.

Apple is planning to release a new iPad Pro with a display that measures about 11 inches, according to Taiwan's Economic Daily News.

We've already heard rumors about a 10.5-inch iPad Pro with slimmer bezels and no home button, so Apple could include a slightly larger 11-inch display without increasing the physical size of the tablet itself. This would mirror the iPhone X, which has a 5.8-inch screen, but is smaller than an iPhone 8 Plus.

Details are hard to gather from a loose translation of the Chinese report, which says the 11-inch iPad Pro and an updated 12.9-inch iPad Pro are likely to be released at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June, echoing an earlier prediction from Rosenblatt Securities analyst Jun Zhang.

Both new iPad Pro models are expected to feature Face ID and faster eight-core Apple A11X processors. It's unclear if the tablets will have notches for the TrueDepth system, or a slimmer, uniform top bezel that still has enough room to house the camera and sensor technology that powers the facial recognition.

The report, citing a source, adds that Apple has no new iPhone models planned for the first half of 2018, dampening hopes for an iPhone SE refresh. The first new models of the year will likely be the so-called iPhone X2, iPhone X2 Plus, and a 6.1-inch aluminum iPhone with Face ID in September.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had already cast doubt on rumors about a second-generation iPhone SE launching in the first half of 2018. He said Apple was likely to focus its development resources on the trio of iPhone X-like models expected to launch in the second half of the year.

The current iPhone SE looks much like the iPhone 5s, including a smaller four-inch display, preferred by a subset of customers. The device is powered by Apple's A9 chip, like the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, and it has 2GB of RAM, a 12-megapixel rear camera, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and Touch ID.

Apple hasn't fully refreshed the iPhone SE since it launched in March 2016, but it did double its available storage capacities to 64GB and 128GB last March. It also dropped the device's starting price to $349 last September.

A Mac App Store app called Calendar 2 has been mining a digital coin known as Monero using customers' machines, and Apple took no action against the app despite knowing about it for at least 24 hours.

As Ars Technica points out, Calendar 2 is supposed to have an opt-in feature that allows users to choose to let the app mine cryptocurrency to unlock paid features that normally require an in-app purchase, but instead, it's been bugged and has been mining Monero by default.

Surprisingly enough, Apple has allowed the Calendar 2 app to remain available in the Mac App Store despite the fact that it openly embraces cryptocurrency mining. Ars Technica asked Apple if the app violated App Store policies, but did not receive a response, and more than 24 hours after Ars contacted Apple, the app remains available for purchase in the Mac App Store.

It's not clear if Apple has left the app in place because it approves of allowing cryptocurrency mining in the Mac App Store as a way to enable paid features or because Mac App Store apps often receive little attention from the company.

Regardless, because of the attention the feature has received from the media today, Qbix, the company behind Calendar 2, has decided to remove the feature from the app. Qbix founder Gregory Magarshak told Ars Technica that the currency miner's rollout had been complicated by bugs that prevented it from working as intended, with the miner running continuously even when not approved by the user. Other bugs caused it to use too much of a Mac's resources.

Magarshak originally said Qbix would update the app to fix the bugs, but he later told Ars that Qbix has decided to remove the miner in the app, so there will be no way to get free features via cryptocurrency mining going forward. From an email he sent to Ars Technica:

We have decided to REMOVE the miner in the app. The next version will remove the option to get free features via mining. This is for three reasons:

1) The company which provided us the miner library did not disclose its source code, and it would take too long for them to fix the root cause of the CPU issue.

2) The rollout had a perfect storm of bugs which made it seem like our company *wanted* to mine crypto-currency without people's permission, and that goes against our whole ethos and vision for Qbix.

3) My own personal feeling that Proof of Work has a dangerous set of incentives which can lead to electricity waste on a global scale we've never seen before. We don't want to get sucked into this set of incentives, and hopefully our decision to ultimately remove the miner will set some sort of precedent for other apps as well.

Even though the features are going to be removed from the Mac App Store app, it continues to be unclear how Apple feels about cryptocurrency mining within apps and if the company's apparent indifference on the issue is going to lead to additional Mac apps attempting to go this path to implement features in exchange for processing power.

Websites and malware have been sneakily mining for currency by taking advantage of unsupecting users, but Calendar 2's method of openly offering features in exchange for free mining is new to the Mac App Store.

Update: Calendar 2 is no longer available from the Mac App Store, but it is not clear if it was removed by Qbix or pulled by Apple.

Update 2: Apple did indeed pull the Calendar 2 app from the Mac App Store after learning of the currency mining issue. Qbix says it worked with Apple to remove the feature and introduced a new version of the app with no mining.

In addition to our standalone articles covering the latest Apple news and rumors at MacRumors, this Quick Takes column provides a bite-sized recap of other headlines about Apple and its competitors on weekdays.

Monday, March 12

- PGA TOUR introduces augmented reality app: PGA TOUR AR uses Apple's ARKit platform on iOS 11 to project 3D models of featured holes on any flat surface. Fans will be able to select their favorite player on the golf course, compare shot trails from each round, and compare the shots of different players.

The first featured hole will be No. 6 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational starting March 15, while shot trails can be reviewed from the seventh hole of last month's AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am tournament. The end goal is for at least one hole to be featured at every tournament on the PGA TOUR schedule.

Commentary: PGA TOUR AR is free on the App Store for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, and iPad Pro models. The app is somewhat rudimentary at launch, but an update later this year will enable fans to view 3D shot trails for selected players at live golf tournaments.

- Apple Bluewater re-opens Saturday, March 24, according to a photo shared yesterday by Joe White on Twitter: The store has been closed for nearly eight months to allow for renovations to be completed. Apple Bluewater is located in Greenhithe, Kent, on the edge of Greater London in England.

- Canada to initiate mobile emergency alerts on April 6: iPhones and other LTE-enabled smartphones in Canada will receive emergency alerts from the government about life-threatening situations, such as tornadoes, flash floods, and child abductions, when necessary. On an iPhone, these will appear in the form of a push notification at no cost to the user. There is currently no way to opt out.

Commentary: This long-overdue feature, already in place in the United States, should greatly extend the visibility of emergency alerts beyond TV and radio in Canada. Test alerts, to be identified as such, are scheduled to begin in May.

Other Reading:

• BuzzFeed News interviews Mikey Elkins, winner of $25,000 on HQ Trivia: The 25-year-old physical education teacher from Jacksonville, North Carolina said he was "sitting on his toilet" guessing most of the answers to win the special one-person-takes-all prize on Sunday.
  

• AAPL sets another all-time high closing price: $181.72. Apple's market cap rises to around $922 billion.
  

• Intel fights for its future: Jean-Louis Gassée, an Apple executive in the 1980s, argues that Intel acquiring rival chipmaker Broadcom would be a "suicidal defensive move" against a possible Broadcom-Qualcomm merger, which could improve Qualcomm's relationship with Apple.

For more Apple news and rumors coverage, visit our Front Page, Mac Blog, and iOS Blog. Also visit our forums to join in the discussion.